Effects of an energy and micronutrient supplement on iron deficiency anemia, physical activity and motor and mental development in undernourished children in Indonesia

Abstract

Objectives: This paper reports the effects of an energy and micronutrient supplementation on mental and motor development, activity and behavior under natural conditions of children classi®ed as iron de®cient anemic and iron replete. Design: Children were randomly assigned to two different nutritional supplements: (1) 12 mg iron either 1171 or 209 kJ; (2) 104 kJ 0 iron. Treatment lasted for 6 months. Setting: The sites were six tea plantations in Pangalengan, West Java. Subjects: Eighteen anemic subjects (hemoglobin`110 gaL; transferrin saturation (TS)`16%) and 18 matched (sex and age) controls (hemoglobin b 110 gaL; TS b 16%) were selected from a pool of children with the following characteristics: no chronic disease; length-for-age 7 1 standard deviation (s.d.) and weight-forlength between 71 and 72 s.d. of the median of the reference of the World Health Organization. Methods: Hemoglobin, ferritin, transferrin saturation and erythrocyte protoporphyrin were evaluated before and 6 months after treatment. The following psychological measurements were obtained at baseline and 2, 4 and 6 months later. Mental and motor development was evaluated with the Bayley Scale. Motor activity was measured by 4 h continuous observations at home and at day care centers. The interactions between the child and its social and physical environment were also evaluated during 4 h of observations. Results: Anemic children showed faster motor development and greater physical activity than the control children did. None of the other tests showed inter-group differences.

Effect of iron supplementation on cognition in Greek preschoolers

“…The results observed in this study are in agreement with previous research that has shown an improvement in cognitive measures in infants (Oski & Honig, 1978;Walter et al, 1983;Driva et al, 1985;Idjradinata & Pollitt, 1993;Harahap et al, 2000;Lozoff et al, 2003), preschoolers (Pollitt et al, 1983(Pollitt et al, , 1986Seshadri & Gopaldas, 1989;Soewondo et al, 1989;) and school age children (Seshadri & Gopaldas, 1989;Bruner et al, 1996;Lynn & Harland, 1998) after treatment with iron. This study's findings advances our understanding in a number of ways particularly in delineating the type of attentional processes affected by IDA.…”

Young Zanzibari Children with Iron Deficiency, Iron Deficiency Anemia, Stunting, or Malaria Have Lower Motor Activity Scores and Spend Less Time in Locomotion , ,3

“…Nutritional and health factors such as iron deficiency anemia and stunting influence both motor development (5-9) and motor activity (3,(10)(11)(12)(13)) and these in turn influence each other with effects on children's ability to explore the environment and caregiver behavior. Motor activity is highly dependent on motor development.…”

Implementation of Research for Quality of Care Project! Measuring and Improving Physician Compliance with WHO Clinical Practice Guidelines for ‘Iron Deficiency Anemia in Children’

“…More than 30 years of research revealed the negative impact of IDA on Intelligence, behavior, psychomotor, Social, cognitive performance, neurophysiologic and metabolic functions of brain [11]. Studies proved IDA negatively influence scores on tests of intelligence (6-15 points lower) [9] reduced motor activity [14][15][16] developmental delay [16] with disturbed socio-emotional behavior like irritability, decreased attention span and emotional responsiveness [10]. It is hypothesized that during infancy particularly, rapid development leads to peak metabolic activity of brain making it more liable to deficiencies of substrates required for metabolism [9,13,17,18].…”